[OT] perl and CLRs (.NET rocks)

[Ovid]

--- Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote:

> As far as I can tell, .NET is liked by the Windows fanboys, mainly
> because
> Microsoft are telling them it's the next big thing[0] and they've
> been so stuck in their monoculture they believe it.

Actually, from what I've seen of our developers here who use .NET, it's
pretty impressive and the tools being built on it are very cool.

C# is like Java with the big, ugly warts replaced by small, ugly
pimples (which, in turn, Microsoft is gradually popping).

F# (http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/fsharp.aspx) is similar to ML,
but built for .NET and therefore can take advantage of the libraries.

LINQ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query) is cool
no matter how you look at it.  I'd kill for something similar to be
built on Parrot (and I understand that LINQ can run on Mono:
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1253#comment-13852).

Power Shell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell) is also
based on .NET.  Everything in Power Shell is an object (not a string)
and can be manipulated accordingly.  Shell programming done sane, from
what I see.

In short, Microsoft is sitting up and paying attention to developer
needs.  They have serious traction and I think they're getting better
all the time.  While I am hardly an MS fanboy, they're finally
innovating again.

Cheers,
Ovid

--

Buy the book -- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/
Perl and CGI -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/